Chewing the dumpling was an exercise and swallowing it an act of will. “No. I got all turned around in the forest. It was only by luck that I struck the King’s Road. When I saw it through the trees, I thought sure there would be a work crew who could help me. But it was still as death out there. What happened?” I took another bite of the corn dodger. No. Familiarity didn’t improve it. But it felt good to have food inside me.
“King decided to pull the work crews off. He’s got more important things for them to do.” Before I could ask what, he said, “So you said you’re a trapper?”
Actually, he had said it, but the lie worked as well as any other. I filled my mouth with half a corn dodger and nodded.
“Yeah?” He looked skeptical. “What happened to all your gear, then? How’d you get lost from your trapline?”
I swallowed the greasy bread and hastily backtracked. “Well, I thought I was going to be a trapper. Thought I knew more than anyone else about it. I did a lot of trapping, back west in the Midlands. But it’s getting real settled there, and I’d always heard the best furs came out of the Barrier Mountains. So I thought I’d go take some. Everyone warned me, but, well, I thought I had to try. The fear wasn’t too bad when I went in there. You know, I thought I could take it, get some good furs when no one else could. But then the fear come down, and—well, I didn’t think I was going to stay sane, let alone live. I got all turned around, lost everything I had, and I just couldn’t find my way out.”
Now he was nodding sagely. “Oh, yes. I think we’ve all known what that feels like. But lately, it’s slacked off. For a while there, it was gone, then it come back worse than ever, and now it’s gone again. Likely that’s why you could come to your senses.” He sighed. “I still don’t trust it to stay gone. I don’t go any deeper into that forest than I have to. I get my firewood along the edge of it. But I don’t walk under the trees. No, sir.”
“I expect you’re wise. Wish I’d kept the same rules. So why did the King give up on his road?”
Kesey grinned, enjoying being the bearer of big news. “You ain’t heard nothing about doings in the Midlands?”
“Who would tell me? The trees?”
He laughed. “Big gold strike back east. And I mean big. Some fool daughter of a noble family sent the Queen a bunch of rocks, saying she thought she’d find them interesting. Well, she surely did! King claimed it all for the Crown, but that don’t stop some folks, you know what I mean. They swarmed the place. The King pulled the prison workers back from the roadwork to put them to digging for gold instead of chopping trees, and pulled most of the troops back to keep the prisoners busy at what they were supposed to do and keep other folk from doing what they aren’t supposed to do. It’s huge, my friend. Fellow told me that the newspaper says there’s a whole city sprung up near the diggings, in just a couple of weeks!” He sat back in my chair and laughed at me. “I can’t believe you ain’t heard nothing. Bet you’re the only man in Gernia who hasn’t.”
“Probably so,” I agreed. My mind was whirling. I put the last piece of corn dodger into my mouth and chewed thoughtfully, then followed it with a mouthful of the very black coffee. Gold. So that had been Professor Stiet’s game. When Dewara had dragged me home, I’d carried off an ore sample with me. Caulder had stolen it, then I’d given it to him, he had shown his uncle after his father disowned him and his uncle had adopted him, his uncle had recognized what it was, and now my little sister had started a gold rush by sending more ore samples to the Queen. I tried to sort out all the threads. Was this magic, this complicated chain of happenstance? Had that been what the magic intended all along, that I start a gold rush to drain the Gernians away from the Specks’ territory? I had a hazy remembrance of thinking that the flow of population responded more to pulling than to pushing. I hadn’t shoved Gernia away from the Speck territories. I’d pulled it back toward the Midlands by appealing to its greed. King Troven would not have hesitated. A gold mine in the hand was worth several prospective roads to a seacoast he’d never seen.
“Shock, isn’t it? Gold. You can bet that the Landsingers are singing a different tune now. I heard they want to do a lot of trade with us, and are offering some pretty favorable terms. I heard some of our nobles are saying, ‘Hold out for them returning our coastal provinces to us.” Wonder if they’ll cave that far.”
I was still trying to put it all together. “So what’s that done to Gettys?”